Dress, Appearance and Perception in Apuleius' Metamorphoses

469 Pages·2013·2.67 MB·English

by  Britt Paul

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Dress, Appearance and Perception in Apuleius’
Metamorphoses

Britt Sarah Paul

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in Latin in the University of Auckland, 2012.
I

Contents

Abstract ii
Acknowledgements iii
Foreword iv
Abbreviations v

Introduction 1-13
Chapter 1 Perception and its Implications with Regard to
Appearance 14-83
Chapter 2 Physiognomy and Metamorphosis in the Novel 84 -118
Chapter 3 Socrates and the Ragged Garment 119-172
Chapter 4 Pythias and Insignia 173-209
Chapter 5 Thrasyleon 210-247
Chapter 6 Tlepolemus/Haemus, Plotina and Cross-Dressing 248-297
Chapter 7 Religion and Costume A: The cinaedi and the
Dea Syria 298-332
Chapter 8 Religion and Costume B: Isis and Osiris 333- 394
General Conclusion 395-398
Appendix: Habitus 399-420
Bibliography 421-461
II

Abstract
This thesis consists of a literary investigation into the link between
physical appearance and perception in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius of
Madaura, a novel written in Latin in the middle of the second century A.D.
Applying a broadly Platonist analytical methodology to the Metamorphoses, I
aim to show how Apuleius’ philosophical education, influenced by the literary
climate of the time in which he lived and wrote, known as the Second Sophistic,
appropriated the function of physical appearance (including clothing) in the
novel, directing it towards an allegorical end. The hypothesis is that a
character’s physical appearance ultimately reveals the truth about him,
howsoever hard he may strive to conceal his identity through disguise.
Clothing is the garment of the soul and reflects personal identity.
Perception is instrumental in accessing true character; however, only
those characters that have the correct perception are able to do so. The
working model for perception in the novel is Socratic and can be sourced in
Apuleius’ philosophical works, heavily influenced by the ideas of Plato. By
applying this Socratic notion of perception to the characters in the
Metamorphoses we are empowered to gauge their perceptive faculties.
The reader’s perception, too, is activated by Apuleius’ narrative strategy
and his use of literary allusion for the purposes of character creation and
interpretation. This purpose accounts for the high level of allusive material in
the novel of many kinds: poetic, embracing Greek and Latin epic, Roman satire
and love elegy; and prose, including physiognomy, philosophy, historiography
and declamation and motifs commonly occurring in the Greek romance and
Latin prose traditions.
The allegorical function of dress and appearance as reflecting soul-types
is present all throughout the novel but looks towards the final book where
philosophical allegory appears in the guise of Isiac religion. Book 11 submits
the question of personal identity to knowledge of a higher being: knowing
oneself and others, the preoccupation of the first ten books of the
Metamorphoses, is prerequisite to knowing the Platonic God, and is only
achieved through the correct training of the perceptive faculties.
III

Acknowledgements
To numerous people I owe an enormous debt of gratitude. Obviously to
my supervisor, Dr Marcus Wilson, who has uncondescendingly supported me
throughout all the trials of writing a doctoral thesis, and through all the
concomitant responsibilities of a doctoral candidate (namely, writing and
presenting conference papers), and in addition to his numerous responsibilities
as Head of Department, lecturer, publisher and supervisor to numerous other
postgraduate students, my debt of gratitude is enormous. To my secondary
supervisor, Professor Anne McKay, whose unobtrusive and quiet support has
often gone unacknowledged and underappreciated by me, the strength of my
appreciation far outweighs my expression of it.
Further thanks on the academic front also go to Dr Abigail Dawson for
her insights into aspects of physiognomy; to Dr Dougal Blyth for his help with
Plato’s language; to Simon Oswald, now at Harvard, also for help with the
Greek of Plato; to Miriam Bissett for help with understanding Greek vases; and
to Christopher Summer for assistance with translations of academic German
texts. Especial thanks go to Professor Egelhaaf-Gaiser of the University of
Göttingen for generously allowing me to consult an unpublished article.
To the University of Auckland thanks are due for its generous Doctoral
Scholarship, for funds to attend the ICAN IV Conference (Lisbon, 2008), the
Genre Conference (Sydney, 2010) and the Dining Divinely Conference
(Christchurch, New Zealand, 2010).
To the support staff of the Department of Classics and Ancient History at
the University of Auckland, I also wish to acknowledge their part in the
completion of my thesis, especially Pauline Brill, Josanne Blyth, Berthe Aouad,
and John Young, whose administrative skill is matched only by their willingness
to go out of their way to help.
This thesis would not have been brought to completion without the
personal support of numerous others. It goes without saying that my
immediate family heads this list, especially my brother, Jason. After them come
Maud Cahill, supplier of academic books and much moral support, Bryan
Clifford and Roger Liddle. Thank you.
IV

Foreword
The text of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses I use is that of the Loeb Classical
Library with a translation by Hanson in two volumes, 1989. Where I draw
attention to Hanson’s text, I give date, volume and page number, thus: 1989, 2:
14. Where I diverge from his text, this will be explicitly stated. All English
translations of the Metamorphoses are those of Hanson, unless otherwise
stated. For Apuleius’ other works, I refer to the texts in the Belles Lettres series.
In this series, Apuleius’ Apologia and Florida are edited and translated by Paul
Vallette (1971), his philosophical works (De Deo Socratis, De Platone et eius
Dogmate, De Mundo) and fragments are submitted to editing, translation and
commentary by Jean Beaujeu (1973). The three philosophical works are
presented in the thesis as DDS, DPD and DM. Apuleius’ defence speech will be
referenced as the Apologia and his other oratorical work, the Florida, will be
referenced as Florida. For the sake of clarity, I retain the book division of De
Platone et eius Dogmate as followed by Beaujeu, but I use Arabic numerals. For
the De Deo Socratis and the De Mundo I simply follow the Arabic numerals in
the margin of the page. Again, any divergences from these editions will be
specified. All emphasis in bold type of passages quoted in Apuleius’ works is
mine, unless otherwise stated.
In contradistinction to the practice of Hanson, for the sake of clarity, I
use single quotation marks (‘…’) where a character other than Lucius is
speaking or relating the words of another character again.
V

Abbreviations
DDS: De Deo Socratis (Apuleius)
DM: De Mundo (Apuleius)
DPD: De Platone et eius Dogmate (Apuleius)
GCA: Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius
GCN: Groningen Colloquia on the Novel
LHS: Leumann, Hoffmann, Szantyr, Lateinische Grammatik (1972-79, München:
Beck).
LS: Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (1996, Oxford: Oxford University
Press).
OCD: Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition (1996, Oxford: Oxford University
Press).
OLD: Oxford Latin Dictionary (1982, Oxford: Clarendon Press).
TLG: Thesaurus Linguae Graecae.
TLL: Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (1900 -, Leipzig: Teubner).
1

Introduction
This thesis consists of an investigation into bodily appearance and dress,
expressed as costume and disguise, in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, a novel
written in the Latin language in the second century A.D. There are numerous
examples of appearance and dress in the novel which form the basis of my
investigation. Following the order in which they arise in the novel, these are:
the noble demeanour of Lucius, the rags of Socrates and Milo, and the
magisterial dress and insignia of Pythias in Book 1; the facial covering of
Thelyphron and the Isiac dress of Zatchlas in Book 2; the asinine form of Lucius,
which is the result of his transformation, in Book 3; Thrasyleon’s bear disguise
and Chryseros’ rags in Book 4; Cupid’s “cloak of invisibility” in Books 4 and 5;
Thrasyllus’ “disguise” and the cross-dressing of Tlepolemus and Plotina in Book
7; the mock-ritual costume of the cinaedi in Book 8; the rags of the mill-slaves
and the ghost in Book 9; the colourful costumed pantomime in Book 10; and,
finally, in Book 11, there are a number of manifestations of costume beginning
with the dress of Isis, then moving on to the carnivalesque costumes of the
anteludia, the stately ritual procession of the Isiac initiates in their vestments,
the retransformation of Lucius into human form and his initiation garment, and
the non-textile epiphany of Osiris to Lucius, which concludes the novel.
Attendant upon clothing and appearance in the Metamorphoses is
perception,1 as dress can be perceived to function in two ways: it both
conceals true character in its primary function as disguise and reveals true
character in its secondary function as, what I shall term, “garment of the soul”
(i.e. habitus).2 The secondary function of clothing is not, however, of less

1 In this thesis, my concern is with (Socratic) perception as a critical faculty, and not with
ancient notions of perception as sight, or an optic faculty. For an analysis of the ancient
theories of perception as the reception of images in the ancient novel, see Morales (2004)
for the Greek romances, especially Achilles Tatius, and for the Roman novel, see Slater
(1997), 89-105 (although he discusses at greater length the novel of Petronius).
2 I shall on occasion throughout the thesis refer to dress in its capacity as reflective of
personal nature, as habitus, a Latin word which could be used equally for outer appearance
and the state of the soul or mind, although the word need not arise in the text for clothing
or physical appearance to work as habitus. For both referents the etymology is the same,
deriving from habeo. I use the word habitus with this meaning sparingly by reason of the
word’s modern accretions as a result of its appropriation by sociologists and anthropologists
2

importance than its primary function, but is dependent on the perceptual
acuity of the beholder. Apuleius was far from insensitive to the question of
perception, especially with regard to outer appearance. He writes of it in
several of his works and imbues his narrative work, the Metamorphoses, with
stories which project it to the forefront of the reader’s imagination. It is within
the nexus of perception and the body, clothed and unclothed, that the
overarching philosophical thrust of the novel is most keenly apprehended, as it
comes to dominate many aspects of the narration and brings with it a further
set of questions concerning the reception and interpretation of identity
through the clothed or unclothed body.
Perception, aided by Apuleius’ highly descriptive and allusive narrative
style, is the key ingredient in understanding this dual function of appearance:
for every indication that a costume or an item of costume is assumed as an
aspect of disguise with a view to obscuring personal identity, there is as much
evidence in the text that the same costume or item thereof reveals essential
information about the wearer, howsoever much he or she may not have
intended this. Perception is the factor in the novel that allows both functions
of dress to emerge simultaneously, or, in some cases, gradually. When the
latter is the case, pieces of information imparted by certain characters in
different places in the narrative as it progresses, give a different reading to
costume, one that questions the interpretation given it by other characters.
Perception in the novel finally undergoes a metamorphosis too, as the varying
currents of perception run into the same channel in Book 11, the final book,
where one perception of dress and appearance – that of Lucius, conflated with
the author, Apuleius - prevails over all preceding readings. Narration is
therefore important to the theme of clothing and appearance in the
Metamorphoses through the aspect of narratorial perception.
The stories that make up the novel as a whole are brought to us through
the main narrator, Lucius. Other narrators occur in the novel, both in the main
narrative of Lucius’ experiences and in those which are not Lucius’ own - the

in response to the critical function it was given by these, especially (but not exclusively)
Pierre Bourdieu in the twentieth century. For more on the concept of habitus, both ancient
and modern and its role in the Metamorphoses, see the Appendix and Chapters 2 and 4.
3

embedded narratives - but Lucius is the character who has lived through the
experiences that form the main narrative and it is he who receives the
embedded tales; hence, all narration in the novel ultimately, in spite of
seeming lapses and the persona of ignorance he occasionally assumes, comes
through Lucius. The knowledge and enlightenment acquired by Lucius as the
“I-narrator”, who presents an “auctorial” point of view as the result of having
lived through the experiences narrated,3 is retrospectively imposed on the
relation of the stories that make up the novel. This is essential for
understanding the transformative role of Book 11. In this book, whatever
previously carried negative connotations, like certain colours or colour
combinations, acquires a positive reading.
However, the perception of a deeper reality behind intended disguise is
no less the prerogative of the reader than of other characters within the
novel. 4 It is not only through multiple and successive readings of the novel that
the interplay of dress’s two functions – disguise and habitus – is recognised. It
can be readily accessible upon the first reading alone to the perceptive reader.
I also believe the ideal reader of the Metamorphoses to be capable of scenting
out the subtleties in the novel and perceiving the allusions and intertextual

3 For these terms, and the problems related to their usage, see the GCA commentary on
Book 9 (1995), 7-12. For the sake of consistency and to avoid complications associated with
the application of narratological terms to the Metamorphoses, I shall refer to this
enlightened narrative voice which imposes itself, as “auctorial Lucius.”
4 On the demands of the text on the reader, see Svendsen (1978) and Zimmerman (2001),
249-252. At this point, I shall extensively quote Svendsen (1978) who seems to me to sum
up the interplay between perception and authoritative narrative quite succinctly (102): “In
the prologue the allusions to future action, to autobiographical information, and to literary
categories all suggest a ‘retrospective’ narrative and inspire confidence in the reader.
Despite his formulaic humility and linguistic disclaimer, the reader senses a highly literate,
sophisticated narrator who will exercise control over the ensuing narrative, a control which
never occurs … The reader is exposed to new characters … along with the narrator, and the
latter’s perception of those characters, tales and digressions is consistently proved faulty
and naïve by succeeding action … Upon conversion the ‘retrospective’ narrator promised by
the prologue reasserts himself, perceives the true significance of his past experience, and
interprets it for the reader.” I will state, however, that not all Lucius’ judgments are false or
naïve. He can see through the cinaedi (8.28-29. See Chapter 7) and he intuitively perceives
discrepancies, such as the strange mix of heroic and passive behind the first appearance of
Haemus (7.5. See Chapter 6).